The Incorporation of America [25th Anniversary Edition]: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age

A classic examination of the roots of corporate culture, newly revised and updated for the twenty first century Alan Trachtenberg presents a balanced analysis of the expansion of capitalist power in the last third of the nineteenth century and the cultural changes it brought in its wake. In America's westward expansion, labor unrest, newly powerful cities, and newly mechanized industries, the ideals and ideas by which Americans lived were reshaped, and American society became more structured, with an entrenched middle class and a powerful business elite. Here, in an updated edition which includes a new introduction and a revised bibliographical essay, is a brilliant, essential work on the origins of America's corporate culture and the formation of the American social fabric after the Civil War. Preface to the Twenty-fifth-Anniversary Edition | ix Acknowledgments | xvii Preface | 3 1. The Westward Route | 11 2. Mechanization Takes Command | 38 3. Capital and Labor | 70 4. Mysteries of the Great City | 101 5. The Politics of Culture | 140 6. Fictions of the Real | 182 7. White City | 208 Revised and Expanded Bibliographical Essay | 235 Index | 263 Analyzes the development of the U.S.'s modern socioeconomic structure in the late nineteenth century, discussing factors such as westward expansion, mechanization, labor unrest, and the growth of cities